Not
every album that reappears in a lavish, dramatically expanded boxed version deserves
this treatment, but U2’s powerful and cohesive The Joshua Tree sure merits its recently released 30th
anniversary Super Deluxe Edition. On one of its most famous songs, Bono sings
“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” yet musically, this is the LP
where U2 found exactly what they were
looking for. Commercially, too: The
Joshua Tree, which Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois produced, was the fastest-selling
album of all time in the U.S. when it debuted here in March 1987. It topped the
charts, went on to sell 25 million copies worldwide, earned an Album of the
Year Grammy, and turned the group into superstars.

One
listen tells you why. In fact, you don’t have to venture beyond the first three
cuts to sense that something really powerful is going on here. “I Still Haven’t
Found What I’m Looking For,” “With or Without You,” and Where the Streets Have
No Name” were all major hits (the first two of these topped the charts),
thanks to anthemic melodies, gripping performances, and intense, introspective
lyrics,

Politics
and social issues permeate the album, which has been said to reflect American
themes and to be influenced by time the band spent in the country. In fact,
some of the songs have nothing specifically to do with the U.S., but the
vastness of America, the ambitions and adventurousness of its people, as well
as the country’s evil undercurrents, are recurring themes.

Probably
by design, the lyrics tend to be subtle rather than overt. While “Running to
Stand Still” mentions “the needle chill,” for example, you wouldn’t know that
it’s about a heroin epidemic in Dublin unless you’d read that somewhere. Nor
would you know that “Bullet the Blue Sky” addresses U.S. military intervention
in El Salvador’s civil war in the 1980s. Also non-specific are “Exit,” which
was reportedly inspired by Norman Mailer’s The
Executioner’s Song; “Red Hill Mining Town,” which is about a UK miners’
strike; and “Mothers of the Disappeared,” which concerns political dissidents
murdered in Argentina.

But
you don’t have to know the inspiration for these lyrics to appreciate their
intensity. In fact, the lack of specificity contributes to the universality of
these uniformly poetic and profound lines; and combined with the music—which
draws on influences ranging from the Velvet Underground to the Beatles and
Stones to Irish roots music—they convey a search for love, truth, and a moral
compass. The Edge’s guitar pyrotechnics are consistently elegant, and the bass
and drum work of Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen provide a pulsating foundation
for Bono’s passionate and other-worldly vocal work.

This
is actually the second Joshua Tree
box—a 20th anniversary collection appeared in 2007—and it picks up
some material from the last one, including the earlier package’s remastered
version of the original album; liner notes from critic Bill Flanagan; and some
outtakes and B-sides, such as “Silver and Gold,” from Sun City—Artists United Against Apartheid, with Bono and Keith
Richards; the frenetic “Spanish Eyes”; and ”Drunk Chicken/America,” which features
a snippet of Allen Ginsberg reading from Howl.

But
even if you have the 2007 set, you might be tempted to upgrade, because this
one—which arrives in a heavy-duty vinyl-LP-sized slipcase—adds quite a bit. The most
notable fresh carrot is a high-octane 77-minute, 17-track previously unreleased
1987 New York Madison Square Garden concert. Apparently, the show was edited to
fit on a single CD, as several songs from the show are missing; but the disc
does include nearly all of the numbers from Joshua
Tree plus such earlier triumphs as “Pride in the Name of Love” and “Sunday
Bloody Sunday.” Other highlights in the concert include a pair of medleys—one that
combines Joshua Tree’s “Exit” with a
bit of Van Morrison’s “Gloria” and one that weds “I Still Haven’t Found What
I’m Looking For” to Bob Marley’s “Exodus.”

The
package also incorporates previously unavailable outtakes, B-sides, and remixes,
among them an alternative mix of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”; a
folio of eight LP-jacket-sized color pictures of the band by Anton Corbijn; and
an 84-page hardcover book of black-and-white photos by the Edge that seem redolent
of Ansel Adams’s work. The photos are good but the main attraction here is
obviously the music—particularly the remastered 1987 album and the concert
recording.

Since
this box set delivers so much, it might seem petty to want even more, but I do
wish the compilers had been able to include a 5.1 Blu-ray audio mix of the
album and also a high-quality period concert video. The latter may not exist,
as the best U2 could come up with for the 2007 reissue was a DVD of footage
from a 1987 concert that had reportedly been videotaped, not filmed. As for a
surround-sound mix of the original LP, well, maybe they’re saving that for a 40th
anniversary box.

Chris Smither’s 18th
Album Is a Winner

On
Call Me Lucky, one of the best
records of his more than half-century career, folk/blues singer/songwriter
Chris Smither delivers 16 performances on two discs (though it could easily
have been one; total time is 61 minutes). The set includes eight originals,
five of which each appear in two radically different versions; also here are readings
of Chuck Berry’s “Maybellene,” the Beatles’ “She Said She Said,” and the
Mississippi Shieks’ classic “Sittin’ on Top of the World—all of which do what
covers ought to do: make you hear the song in a new light.

Most
of the originals are introspective and melancholy: A typical line, from “Nobody
Home,” goes, “I used to have a house and a spouse, now it’s hers instead / I
thought I had a friend but I think he’s dead.” And later in the same song:
“It’s getting’ hard to maintain connections in a personal way / Everybody wants
to text me cause they ain’t got nothin’ to say.” Even the title track, whose
moniker suggests an upbeat tale, turns out to be the opposite: “They call me
lucky but I don’t know why / I ain’t been lucky since the day you said
goodbye.”

It’s
a measure of Smither’s talent that you can’t tell whether was really suffering
when he made this album or just playing roles. Whatever, his vocals and
melodies are captivating and the lyrics sound fresh and evocative. The icing on
the cake is the fine instrumentation from Smither and a five-man backup group
that features instruments ranging from violin to electric kalimba (a type of
African thumb piano).

BRIEFLY NOTED

The Naked Sun, War with Shadows. This first full-length
album (following two EPs) from Philadelphia’s the Naked Sun is a lilting
folk/rock gem, bolstered by dynamite vocals from front man Andrew Wesley
Harris, emotional lyrics, and fine musicianship. The group cites such
influences as Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, and My Morning Jacket; I
also hear just a hint of the Jayhawks. The record sounds to me like something
out of the sixties, so I wasn’t surprised to read in the accompanying press
release that at least two of the songs were crafted with the help,
respectively, of “a little LSD” and “an intense LSD trip.” The good news for
non-users is that you don’t have to take anything to appreciate the results.

Dale Boyle, Gasoline. I don’t usually review
EPs—there just isn’t room, with all the full-length CDs I have to consider—but
I’ll make an exception for the Montreal-based Dale Boyle’s five-track Gasoline. Like the Naked Sun (see
above), Boyle lists Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty among his influences,
but I think better reference points might be John Mellencamp (whose longtime
drummer Kenny Aronoff plays on this disk) and Steve Earle. Boyle has a
compelling voice—vocally and lyrically—on the four hard-rocking originals here,
which benefit from his ringing guitar work; he also offers a distinctive cover
of Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold.”

Jeff Burger (byjeffburger.com), a longtime magazine editor, has written about music, politics, and popular culture for more than 75 periodicals. His books include Dylan on Dylan: Interviews and Encounters, Lennon on Lennon: Conversations with John Lennon, Springsteen on Springsteen: Interviews, Speeches…